Philly’s City Tap House to open D.C. location

The short-lived 901 Restaurant, which closed earlier this year at 901 9th St. NW, will be replaced by City Tap House, a craft beer-centric bar and restaurant out of Philadelphia, as the BarredinDC blog first reported.

The restaurant will bring higher-end pub fare — blue crab mac & cheese and charred octopus are among the appetizers — and 60 beers on tap in addition to a lengthy bottle list.

City Tap House will be just down Eye Street from the recently opened Del Campo and is situated right across from the soon-to-open CityCenterDC development, two blocks from the convention center.

That location didn’t help 901, however, which was open for just over a year and a half and got a pretty bad review from the Washington Post. Del Campo’s predecessor, PS7’s, also struggled on this short stretch of Eye Street, closing abruptly in 2012.

But the tide may be turning, with the apartments opening at CityCenterDC and with the Marriott Marquis Washington D.C. — the convention center’s designated hotel — expected to open in May 2014. CityCenter is expected to bring a range of restaurant and retail offerings, including DBGB from Daniel Boulud, which will bring more bodies into an area that, for some time was no man’s land around the vacant CityCenter property.